WELCOME to Helen’s kitchen. This web site has been designed to give you sage and personally tested culinary theories and better skills for coping with your kitchen environment.

My goal is to ease America back to the kitchen basics. To bring this long dreaded task, whittled down, to earthly capability.

I witnessed the beginning of convenience foods and the gradual departure of home cooked meals and sit-down family meals. With each decade we’ve strayed a little further away from the stove. And cardboard cuisine has taken your place at the work counter. Salt, fat and sugar are their key ingredients plus a mountain of wrappers.

Results of kitchen absence and the increase of fast food suppers have resulted in more common diseases and unbelievable obesity.

Pop-tarts and sugar frosted oat circles may be swift but it doesn’t equal old fashioned oatmeal or smoothie with fresh fruit & protein powder. Weekends are a wonderful time for home made waffles topped with fresh fruit and light whipped cream or a giant omelet filled with a mountain of freshly sautéed garden veggies and a side of freshly grated potatoes browned in light olive oil. They can be prepared in the same time it takes to drive to a nearby restaurant, wait to be seated, wait for a cook to throw all this on a grill and for it to be served to you. Why not create some wonderful weekend memories from your kitchen? Besides the time you saved, you may even save a families from growing apart and becoming strangers.

As a private chef, my promise was to make wholesome entrees that contained no MSG or harmful additives which were often found in commercial versions. This required a lot of grocery shopping and reading labels. I walk down supermarket aisles virtually in my sleep. I shopped in all of them, from warehouse to local mom and pop to find exactly what my entrees called for. In warm weather I would take a picnic cooler. I reveled in local Farmers Markets, which are still my favorite place to buy. The fresh tomatoes at a farmers market cannot be topped anywhere on the planet. In these bounties of nature I would find needed inspiration to go home and begin cooking.

Since each household had everything in a different place in their kitchen, I simply carried small tools and roast pans with me. It was a school of learning of which no one would ever issue a diploma for innovated hard work and nutritional ethics My teacher was their kitchen. It was here I encountered dangerous
out-dated appliances and looked at the absolute disorganization of the ordinary kitchen. I had dogs under my feet, worn out cookware, dull knives, loose oven doors and carpets that you can slip on. I learned a great deal about how not to keep a kitchen. I went where no sane cook has gone before and few will venture that way
again. Join me each week on culinary journey to the places the cooking channel missed.

In 2001, I pulled some money out of the stock market and I bought a small older home in Sacramento with a square kitchen with 2 huge windows. Soon, I pulled out 50 year old wood cabinets, and old plumbing, creating new functional kitchen workspace with a pegboard to hang my kitchen tools adjacent to my stove A lifetime dream of being able to find things in a kitchen has at come true! I cook for fun and friends and I love every minute!